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She Purred Like a Tiger
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?
Anonymous
The writer Elinor Glyn – mentioned in the poem by Anonymous – has been published again this year by Histria Classics. It’s well over a century since her novella ‘It’ was first published in 1927.
In 1927 Glyn’s novel created the concept of ‘It’ to describe a person who possesses a strange magnetism that attracts both sexes – they are fascinating, mysterious and unbiddable.
An American film starring 1920’s vamp Clara Bow ensured Glyn’s book became astonishingly popular. Elinor Glyn was also a very skilled self-promotor. Born in Britain in 1864 she lived by her wits.
In 2026 fashion magazines – such as Vogue – still use the term It girl in relation to women such as Gabby Richardson, Alex Consani & Manon Bannerman. In the past there were It girls such as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Sienna Miller. Brigitte Bardot was designated the ultimate It girl.
The novel ‘It’ is a tale about wicked lusty men and glamourous femme fatales. The writing is florid and inadvertently funny or blatantly transgressive. Glyn understood the power of sexual fantasies and similar fantasies are still incredibly popular with today’s romantasy fans.
I assumed Glyn’s hero John Gaunt is not the type of man who would appeal to legions of women –
‘He would like to have beaten her and kissed her to death’.
But au contraire – the John Gaunt type had a great appeal to many women and men.
The famous photographer Cecil Beaton revealed in later life that Elinor Glyn was idolized by his private school chums who greatly appreciated high camp humour.
Beaton – who photographed Mrs Glyn in glamorous soft-focus, maintained she’d often been faced with the prospect of either becoming a prostitute or making a living writing. And she chose the pen.
When her husband turned out to be a financially ruinous chancer, Glyn churned out a book a year and produced novellas within days – sometimes staying in bed all day in order to get the job done. Breakfast, lunch and dinner would be delivered on a tray.
Glyn’s novels seem a bit tame by today’s standards but she mesmerized and terrorized Edwardian society with her tales of glamour and lust. Glyn was unstoppable once she’d started and she wrote forty books and several successful screen plays in America. In the 1920’s she was one of the most famous female screen writers and later directed silent films.
Another novel by Elinor Glyn titled Three Weeks, is about a passionate three week affair between a wickedly sophisticated woman – with a dark past – and a sexually inexperienced younger man. The wicked woman soon sorts him out. Purple cushions and sumptuous Tiger rugs feature quite heavily, usually with The Lady squirming around, playing guitar or posing languidly – inciting her lover to fits of passion and despairing love.
When the lady tosses a scarlet rose to Paul he wants to strangle her with love – but instead he bites the rose. Hard. There are many torrid passages and it comes as no surprise the novel inspired a hell of a lot of satire and ribald humour.
Glyn’s prose is gloriously over the top and unintentionally humorous, ‘She purred like a tiger while she undulated like a snake.’
Glyn scrubbed her face with cold water and a wire brush. She was an early devotee of cosmetic surgery and had her jaw surgically lifted forward and her teeth fixed in a forward position. Cecil Beaton recalls that Charlie Chaplin had observed that when she was laughing she had trouble adjusting her lips back over her teeth. She wrote a beauty book and had a strong belief in her own psychic powers.
Glyn had many friends, a huge number of fans, was great company and remained a formidable presence until her death in 1943.
Photograph above is a portrait of author, scriptwriter and film director Elinor Glyn.